Highway #1 - Alaska Highway, Km. 1428

Fish Lake Road

The Pueblo Mine

H.E. Porter staked the Pueblo Mine on July 7, 1899 and soon sold it to the Whitehorse Copper Co. The mine site is located in the Porter Creek valley near the northern end of the copper belt. In 1917 it was connected to White Horse by a 6 1/2 mile wagon road and a rail way spur line connecting the mine to the main White Pass & Yukon Route rail line. The mine was shut down after a cave-in in April 1917 and sold to Atlas Copper Ltd. Atlas Copper went broke pumping and timbering the shafts and in October 1917, Pueblo was shut down again. The mine was closed for good after Richmond Yukon Co. Ltd shipped one load of ore out of the mine in 1929 and one more in 1930. (Whitehorse Star, Special 100-year edition: 1900-1949, July 18, 2000:49.)

Pueblo Mine Cave In

The mine cave-in on March 21, 1917 buried nine men on the 300-foot level and extended from the 200 to the 400-foot level. Rescuers started to drive a drift through solid rock to reach the trapped miners and travelled at an amazing one foot per hour. They reached Harry Graham, Thomas Davis and Nick Radovich, alive and unharmed, on March 24. The 85-foot rescue drift was driven in 72 hours. Two other drifts were started to other parts of the mine but no other miners were found. The rescue work was abandoned on March 29 when it was thought the main shaft was in danger of caving in. The bodies of T. M. McFadden, Bob Collins, Andrew Beecher, B. Levich, Mike Kasovich, and Tony Zuckoff were never recovered. (Whitehorse Star, Special 100-year edition: 1900-1949, July 18, 2000:49.)